Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

"Colin Powell , would have been good but he got caght carrying water and his boss didn't cover for him. So an honorable soldier and man gets his reputation sullied because he was set up by Cheney and Rumfield."

Greg,

In the name if God, what are you talking about? Is your paranoia that bad?

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

The only thing wrong with what Greg says is that he made a typo with Rumsfeld. You know full well what he is talking about. Those two neo-cons had no credibility so they talked Powell in testifying about WMD at the UN because they didn't want their hands dirty. They knew there were no WMD in Iraq but they needed a credible person to make the case for war, and Powell was (and still is) a credible person. When Powell realized he had being played for a chump he walked away from those creeps and never looked back. He still is a Republican but does not want to be associated with the current Republican Party which has gone to the dogs. But you know this, Xavier. You just love to yank Greg's chain to show off to your buddies on this blog. But I figured you out a long time ago. Which is why you like me so much. ;-)

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Powell lost his credibility when he knowingly watched Scooter Libby go to prison for a crime that his aide committed in order to save his own reputation.

But as is most times the case, the truth has been revealed: Powell is a coward of the first order. What kind of person sits silent and watch someone be convicted of a crime and go to prison when the alternative is to speak the truth and let justice prevail?

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Of course we really don't need established religion. At least 99 percnet of all wars are created because of religion. Even Vietnam - when Catholic Cardinal Cushing of New York asked Catholic President Jack Kennedy to save the South Vietnamese Catholics from being inaliated by sending in "military advisors" - which of course the American public was mislead and a tragic and unnecessary war occurred which still scares the face of Americans who gave their a ll, and others who blamed them for something they had no control over - except to believe they were doing the right thing - sort of like Cheny and Iraq.

Strange though, the Vatican goverrnment has the largest Egyptian obelisk taken from Egypt inside of St. Peter's Square, yet no Ten Commandments. And besides a bunch of old men there could never follow those commandments as we are told they are celibate, have a high rate of inappropriate sexual misconduct which makes the place look more like Sodm and Gomorrah expecially with its belief in sanctity of life babies conceived through rape and incest. They wouldn't know Christ if his picture was printed on their credit card - but then they do use tax exempt cash.

(I'm trying to get over a thousand comments before Thanksgiving - and I know you are on my side).

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Bob, for once I agree with Xavier, you are indeed weird, but your heart is in the right place. Try taking a deep breath and stick to one subject at a time. You try and mix too many things at once and that makes you sound weird. Xavier doesn't like what you are saying because it conflicts with his retro sense of the world, but he knows how to construct an argument will clean your clock if he can.

But i hear you. You are a good person but you are trying too hard and trying to make too many points at once. just make one point at a time and try and construct the best possible argument for that one point. You will then get a bunch of flak but don't worry, They don't bite. They are but scared rabbits, afraid that their little world is coming down on them. They just lost a big election and they are lashing out at everybody they don't like as if that was going to change reality.

if you keep it simple nobody will call you weird. They will call you plenty else, but not weird. Hang in there Bob. You can do it. Baby steps. Take them on, But only one point at a time. Good luck to you.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

"In the name if God, what are you talking about? Is your paranoia that bad?

Xavier,

Interesting. Just this morning I was listening to a podcast on which MSNBC host Rachel Maddow was interviewing Bob Burton, the Chief Strategist for the Pro Obama Superpack. She affectionately referred to him as the "Overlord of Dark Money. I liked that .

But contrary to your take on Obama's defense of Susan Rice she was quite impressed with what she thought was the closest thing to "anger" that you see from Obama. She compared the look on his face when he said that McCain and Graham should "take it up with him" to the same look he had in the second debate when Romney embarrassed himself by saying that Obama didn't say "act of terror" during a speech in Rose Garden the day after Benghazi happened. He was pretty peeved that they would "besmirch" Rice's reputation and accomplishments for only repeating what was the CIA's official explanation at the time.

The idea that McCain and Graham (Graham called her "not too bright") would go after Rice on Benghazi does seem to be a bridge too far when you think about. She had nothing to do with administration of the State Department or Benghazi. Why not call Hillary Clinton "not too bright". The idea tha they question Rice's credentials after McCain nominated Rhodes Scholar candidate Sarah Palin does seem to be a bit hypocritical.

But here's where it got interesting. Burton related that the same thing had happened to Colin Powell. He had been informed about WMD's by the CIA and this too had proved to be untrue. Burton related that he thought Powell was still angry about how he had been used in the whole episode. But it gets better. Condoleeza Rice was also victimized by the same bad info from the CIA. And yet Republicans found no reason to deny her eventual ascendence to Sec State though she had spread what amounted to bad data also.

Now when I wrote this I was not aware of the Maddow broadcast. You can check. It took place last night. But it goes to show that more than me question the attacks on Susan Rice as unfair and feckless. Obama was right in calling out McCain and Graham for spreading what amounts to conservative echo chamber conspriracy theories. It was you that ridiculed the President for standing up for his employee and it was I that praised him. Maybe you should have written "In the name of God , what was I thinking".

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Oh, that nasty CIA. You know what you remind me of Greg? On one occasion in a banana republic I was told by a senior minister that he couldn't do anything, that only the government could do something about the issue in question. So now Obama is in the same situation, he is a victim of the CIA, and so is poor Susan Rice, and even Powell. Where do your victim stories end Greg? Are you really that desperate, so put upon? Is that what not believing in God does to you, you poor guy. Geez!

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

It is now you that suffer from reading comprehension disorder. Obama didn't indict the CIA nor did he seek cover for Susan Rice because of it The point isn't that Powell or Condoleeza Rice were "victimized" by the CIA information. The point is that CIA seems to get it wrong intitially sometimes. And that in the case of Condoleeza Rice or Powell for that matter, Republicans didn't care at te time that they had played a part in taking us to war under false pretenses. But almost under the exact same circumstances (except the Bush administration clearly had an agenda with regards to WMD and Obama did not have a Benghazi agenda), McCain and Graham want to lay into the UN Ambassador and call her names.

Now I did claim victimhood for Powell in the sense that now conservatives like to point out that he help take us to war under false pretenses . This because he dared to support Obama (see how that works) no matter how irrational the ticket the Republicans rolled out. Condoleeza Rice has paid no such penalty because she has stayed in line. It interesting when you get your hands caught in the proverbial cookie jar that your remarks become pure snark. Interesting.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Greg said,The problem isn't who promulgated the rule but that it was in the Constitution at all. That the Constitution had notable exceptions to it means that it was not a "winning formula" from the start as Xavier posits. It needed to grow with the country and needed to be corrected for the things that it got wrong or omitted, ---------------------------------------Greg, Did you overlook that the founding fathers allowed for not just one, but two ways to amend the constitution? Is it that you don't think that is sufficient since it requires more than just a plurality? There were reasons for that, but in today's world I would not be surprised if you didn't know the reasoning behind that, for our citizens are somewhat shortchanged in their American government education today.

But perhaps I just don't "get it", so as I have said before, I am open to discussion and correction on any subject.

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

It is interesting that you have decided that I don't have a handle on civics. Maybe I don't. And maybe I don't understand history although it was I that corrrected you on the Civil War body count. Be that as it may. The problem with your statement is that you seem to have forgotten that I mentioned the amendments as evidence that the Founding Fathers didn't get it right at first. And having an amendment process certainly suggests that they knew that they didn't get it right.

My problem is the veneration as you put it that conservatives have for the document. It's a pretty good outline for government but it is by no means a holy writ. Secondarily , with the significant changes that have been made to it, it is hard to know what constitution anyone is talking about when they enter into that worshipful realm that you guys like to enter. Is it the original. The one as amended after the Civil War? Which one?

It's like the Bible. Another sweeping book of sayings, anectdotes, and rules. Yet it is regarde like it is a monlithic and coherent set of rules dictated by God. It is not. People are stil trying to understand what this passage and that passge really meant.

But this is one of markers between progressives and conservatives. You guys look at these writings as universal authorities while progressives judge them for their efficacy. If it doesn't work, we are ready to rewrite and get something better suited to our needs. You guys act like the wisdom of the ages is the wisdom for all ages. For you these documents validate the status quo. When I pose the question to Xavier as what Constitution, he never answered. That because the Bible , the Constitution, and I guess Atlas Shrugged are symbols and can mean just about anything that you want them to mean.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Greg,You answer my post with a diatribe, never addressing my question. Your response is enlightening though because it lays out clearly that you equate the constitution and the Bible as just antiquated books that "grownups" should recognize as such and move on. The only enlightenment dragging the Bible into the discussion is that your views on it are well known and thus equating the constitution to it pretty much says it all to anyone paying attention. I had a strong feeling that such was your opinion of it.

You act as though when people debate the constitution's application to the law that this is a weakness that justifies discarding it, perhaps in favor of decrees I would suppose since you give no hint of what you would put in its place. It is my judgment that you simply don't like the rule of written law if it hinders your agenda and such is the state of your knowledge and judgment concerning how ruling should be accomplished. If this is the best thinking you can do then you should best stick to diatribes.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Greg said............. it was I that corrrected (sic) you on the Civil War body count. ------------------------------There are only two r's in the word "corrected". So, if corrections administered to each other are egalitarian then we are back even if we are to begin a count of such. However, I hope we don't descend to that level for even diatribes are a step up from that.

Discussions are a giant step up from diatribes so in the spirit of discussion I would like for you to explain, once again, using simple language (I am a little slow you know) how it is that America need not pay back the bonds and treasury notes it issues.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Everett, perhaps you didn't get it but Greg does venerate somebody, more specifically the dear leader in turn, provided he is atheist progressive; his ministers; and their panels, like that of 15 persons in my post on broccoli and water at the link below, when properly equipped with "harm/benefit calculators."

In Greg's world, as he has made amply clear over the months, nothing is fixed except the laws of nature, and EVERYTHING has to be carefully calculated at every step. But fear not, Greg, and Zach for that matter, will equip all of us with variable "harm/benefit calculators" to help us with our every decision. I say variable because they will be like iPads and iPhones that will need to be forever updated.

Now, in that world you'll never be able to plan ahead because nothing will be fixed. But that won't matter because plenty of the dear leader's people will be available to give and do things for you. Of course it won't be nirvana because there will still be periods during which those darned traditionalists will rule, but they will become increasingly short and therefore endurable. And at some point the panels, duly equipped with more sophisticated calculators, will determine that even elections are not necessary. Those are anyway just a product of that imperfect and outdated document only traditionalists believe in.

The only painful period will be during the transition. That is today, and why there are some poor souls, like some in this forum, who go around judging everybody but with little of consequence of their own to offer. But in time they too will get their "harm/benefit calculators" to guide them. To their credit Zach and Greg do at least offer variants of decision mechanisms that will help guide us in the future, although Greg's is far less defined except by the dear leader, and, as I just explained, in some ways less fixed, than Zach's.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Well, I don't know Xavier. We can never actually know the make up of another person, but still, I am fascinated with the effort to do so. I do believe that Greg's approach to life is somewhat the polar opposite of mine for I think Greg is the ideal follower and would feel comfortable within the herd.

I do not say this for any glorification of myself, but I am the quintessential rebel. But perhaps different in that I don't want to lead, I just don't want to follow either. I had to strain every part of my being to survive my military service because I just didn't fit into that structure and my superiors knew that too, I think they could see it in my eyes and try as I might, I just couldn't conceal my thoughts from them. I was always in some sort of trouble, but I managed to not go to the stockade and to earn an honorable discharge, the best outcome possible for me.

I consider myself very lucky because if Greg's world came to fruition in my lifetime I have no doubt I would be taken out and shot, despite my every effort to avoid that fate.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Everett, look to North Korea for an approximation of Greg's ultimate Utopia. Of course he would be one of the faces in the background of Dear Leader's glorious photo ops, and the rest of us would be shivering in our studio apartments under 50 watt bulbs.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Paul, you haven't been around long enough to know that atheists, some of them libertarian and others progressive, do offer an alternative; for more see my comment immediately above. In the case of Greg's, the harm/benefit calculator, it may not be as neat and brief as LOVE alone but it will be more fail proof.

Zach's, who hasn't been around recently, on the other hand may be more attractive, even if requiring more work, although we still don't know its full scope. It consists of two components. One is an empathy gene that one assumes will pack love, the attractive component; and the other education on steroids, which is the part that will require hard work. What Zach hasn't told us yet is how people will be motivated to do the hard part--in Greg's there is no need for that because the dear leader's people will provide.

As I said, what makes both alternatives attractive is that they will be fail proof. We will all be good from the get go (those that aren't one assumes won't get their broccoli). All we will need then is something to guide us.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Paul,Perhaps you could then answer a question that I have puzzled over for some time, How is it that I have often heard the phrase (usually at funerals) ".... for he was a God fearing man", but never that I can recall, "...for he was a God loving man"?

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Everett, all I can say is that it works better to guide behavior. Just look how Obama got reelected by inspiring fear of his opposition and then offering himself to deal with it. I suppose you could say that we are just more bad than good, or lazier than hard working, this latter contrast because we let ourselves be guided rather than learning more for ourselves.

Could it be because ultimately the Second Law rules? Which is also why we look to our dear leader to impose order? And here I am only partly joking. There is a leader or coalescer or coalescing agent in every system only God is not corruptible. He too helps provide order which is a scientific or engineering premise of the anchor in my model.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Everett, a further clarification about God not being corruptible. In keeping with the Second Law, He doesn't draw energy. It is his agents that do and why they are corruptible, or subject to failure when the source of energy proves inadequate or not up to the task. So then when people say ".... for he was a God fearing man" they probably mean even when he was not drawing adequate energy, but I admit that here the scientific parallel and logic fail me, except if you assume we draw love from God. Maybe Zach can explain how it works in his empathy gene. Either way fear seems to be a better motivator, except for procreation.

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

To fear God simply means you endow the Creator of the Universe, who is infinite and personal, to be the moral authority over all humanity. Moral means there is right and wrong, and that we humans are directed by God's Law. Some people choose to attribute this Law to "Nature."

I have a question for you...How is fearing God different than fearing 'Nature?"

Do you contend that people should not fear nature and build that healthy fear into their daily life as a way to deal with the powers of the "Natural" world to do us harm?

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Keith, I don't intend anything. I simply wondered why being "... a God fearing person" is seemingly emphasized by many people, but to call a follower "... a God loving person" sounds a little strange to the ear. Perhaps it is just me misunderstanding why this is said often at protestant funerals I have attended. When Paul posted his message emphasizing Jesus' message of the love of mankind that this triggered the thought in my mind. I have no agenda, only a persistent curiosity which has caused me nothing but trouble in my life.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Xavier,I think it was established that Twinkies caused murderous impulses in people back in some murder trial in San Francisco decades ago. I don't understand why they weren't banned back then. That's only common sense, isn't it?

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

First they came for the Twinkies, and we said nothing. Then they came for the Big Gulp and we said nothing. Then they came for the Jello and we said nothing. Then they came for the Pork Rinds and we said nothing. Then they came for the Lucky Charms, and we said nothing. Then they came for our guns and we said nothing. And then they put us all in FEMA concentration camps. But by then it was too late. We had become victims of Leviathan and its broccoli eating minions. And that's how America ended.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Well, Thanksgiving is fast approaching and we will be cooking and eating turkey and dressing in celebration of that holiday that I have never quite understood. It likely did mean a lot to the settlers back in the early days of our fledgling nation. It was a step up from killing each other. In Texas we never got to the point of doing any such ceremony because the early settlers came to realize that our peoples were completely incompatible with each other. The Comanche and other plains tribes were a fierce enemy and one or the other had to go. That resulted in all those tribes being driven north into Oklahoma leaving Texas with only one remaining Indian tribe the Texas Alabama tribe who's reservation is near Livingston, Texas. That is sad, but what can one say? You tell me.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Most of them gradually blended into the American melting pot. Of course the others were free to live separately, but were not allowed to continue to make war on U.S. citizens, which was the civilized way of handling such culture clashes. To this day, peaceful tribes are considered sovereign nations. That has always been the case if you study the actual history without relying on the socialist revisionism taught in public schools and left wing universities.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Tocqueville - Democracy in American."The human beings who are scattered over this space do not form, as in Europe, so many branches of the same stock. Three races, naturally distinct, and, I might almost say, hostile to each other, are discoverable among them at the first glance. Almost insurmountable barriers had been raised between them by education and law, as well as by their origin and outward characteristics, but fortune has brought them together on the same soil, where, although they are mixed, they do not amalgamate, and each race fulfills its destiny apart.

"The success of the Cherokees proves that the Indians are capable of civilization, but it does not prove that they will succeed in it. This difficulty that the Indians find in submitting to civilization proceeds from a general cause, the influence of which it is almost impossible for them to escape. An attentive survey of history demonstrates that, in general, barbarous nations have raised themselves to civilization by degrees and by their own efforts. Whenever they derived knowledge from a foreign people, they stood towards them in the relation of conquerors, and not of a conquered nation."

Such awareness transcends the observable nature of material phenomenon, and at its essence we come to realize that we are all the same/it is all the same, it is only our defilements/ignorance/fears that differentiate us.

One must FEAR an angry, wrathful, vengeful, jealous, etc...(insert your own string of negative emotions here), Fearsome God, in the form of FEAR of those who do not believe & think as they do up to the point of stoning them to death or subjugating/destroying them militarily, while at the same time LOVE the kind, compassionate, ALL LOVING alter ego God, in the form of loving one's neighbors/enemies, forgiving them their trespasses, never casting the first stone, even as they subjugate them, kill them, condemn them to eternal damnation in Hell(Apocalyptic Psychological FEAR, how can you top that for putting the FEAR of God into them?), in the concerted attempt to manage, control & dominate their behavior/minds, as did the ancients in their goal to tame/civilize heathens/barbarians in order to form larger more peaceful agrarian societies.

Unfortunately for this model, it is the manipulation of IGNORANCE using FEAR as the prime motivator & means to POWER that dooms it to eventual failure. IGNORANCE produces & thrives on FEAR, which produces VOLATILITY, which undermines PEACE & begets anger, polarization & war, which bolsters the manipulation of IGNORANCE as THE means to POWER in an endless vicious cycle. It is the clinging to IGNORANCE/ILLUSION that completely stymies the model from transcending the vicious cycle.

Which, ironically, tends t/b consistently exemplified at its core & in its point of origin in the Middle East. IGNORANCE/ILLUSION/FEAR are simply not equipped to "Love thine enemies as thyself". We should not be surprised by this. Such a lofty & worthwhile aspiration can only come about thru the strength of WISDOM. It will never occur via the perpetuation of IGNORANCE/ILLUSION/FEAR as a means to POWER & CONTROL by the FEARFUL over the FEARFUL.

In the context of Xavier's model, it is his chosen anchor, God(The Dear Leader Illusion http://tiny.cc/o29vnw ), which paradoxically he doesn't even believe in himself, that undermines his entire endeavor.

Send a Message

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Journal Community

Make a Connection

Journal Community

Your message has been sent.

Jim said,Keith, fear is a product of ignorance, & ignorance thrives on fear. ------------------------------------Jim, this is one of the dumber things you've said recently. Monkeys are ignorant compared to humans, but they learn to fear snakes quite readily and rightly so.

I suppose it is fruitless to say, but I communicate here in dialog and thus, I do not follow links, not usually anyway.